Los Angeles Rain Storm Not Wet Enough to Ease Drought

9 Sep 2014

The light drizzle that sprinkled Los Angeles on Monday will not mitigate the extreme drought conditions the region has experienced over the last three years.

According to the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, the city and outlying areas received anywhere from less than a tenth of an inch to a quarter inch in the last twenty-four hours. KPCC 89.3 reported that the storm’s greatest value may be the simple pleasure of experiencing an early September rainfall.

George Quirindongo, who moved to Los Angeles only three months ago, reveled in the light rainfall. “I got my first baptism today with the rain, because I’m from New York,” he said. “I got my first California rain today. It was magical.”

Kerjon Lee, a spokesman for the department, said, “It certainly doesn’t look like this storm is going to bring any significant measure of rainfall and certainly not enough to make any sort of dent in the drought.” He added, “There hasn’t been any significant runoff collected in our reservoirs.”

Moreover, Nancy Steele, executive director of the Council for Watershed Health, explained that “We are so dry right now that my guess is that most of the water is simply going to soak into the ground.”

Penny Falcon, manager of water conservation policy legislation and grants at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, offered a more optimistic assessment of Monday’s precipitation: “Hopefully people have said, ‘Oh, it’s raining today,’ and they’re going to shut off their irrigation system and let Mother Nature do her thing,” Falcon said.